Wirebonding is a well known electrical interconnection technique used in the manufacture of integrated circuits and other microelectronic structures. For example, the input/output (I/O) wires of an integrated circuit chip may be wirebonded to their respective wire bond pads on the integrated circuit chip.
Wirebonding is a solid phase welding process that welds the metallic material of a wire to the metallic material of a corresponding wire bond pad. After a wire and a wire bond pad are placed in contact, the wire and the wire bond pad may be welded together using a well known process such as a thermocompression process, an ultrasonic process, or a thermosonic process.
There are two basic forms of wirebond. They are the ball bond form and the wedge bond form. Ball bonding and wedge bonding are both well known in the wirebonding art. The most commonly used elements used to make bonding wire are gold, aluminum, and copper. Gold, aluminum, and copper are strong, ductile, flexible, reliable, and have similar values of electrical resistance. Gold wire bonding is the most widely used wirebonding technology in the integrated circuit industry.
FIG. 1 illustrates a cross sectional view 100 of a prior art wire bond pad 120 and a prior art ball bond 150 of wire 140 bonded to the wire bond pad 120. Wire bond pad 120 is made of a metal conductor such as aluminum or copper. During the process of fabrication, wire bond pad 120 is placed on substrate material 110 (e.g., silicon). The edges of wire bond pad 120 are then covered with passivation material 130. A central portion of the external surface of wire bond pad 120 is open to receive ball 150 on the end of wire 140. Ball 150 is placed on wire bond pad 120 and bonded to wire bond pad 120 using a prior art wirebonding technique.
Integrated circuit designers continue to increase the number of functions that integrated circuits are capable of performing. The increased number of integrated circuit functions has also increased the number of input/output (I/O) wires that must be connected to an integrated circuit. An increase in the number of input/output (I/O) wires for an integrated circuit die also increases the area of an integrated circuit die that must be allocated to the attachment sites for the input/output (I/O) wires.
It is desirable to minimize the amount of area of the integrated circuit die that must be allocated to the attachment sites for the input/output (I/O) wires. One possible approach is to (1) reduce the size of the wire bond pads on the integrated circuit die, and (2) reduce the size of the diameters of the input/output (I/O) wires, and (3) reduce the size of the ball bond on the end of each input/output (I/O) wire.
The use of input/output (I/O) wire having smaller diameters and the use of a smaller ball bond means that there will be a smaller contact area between the ball bond and the wire bond pad. A smaller contact area between the ball bond and the wire bond pad means that the bond strength (i.e., the shear and tensile strength) between the ball bond and the wire bond pad will be lower than the bond strength of a larger ball bond and a larger wire bond pad. The lower bond strength is an undesirable feature.
There is therefore a need in the art for an improved system and method for increasing the bond strength of a bond between a ball bond of a small diameter wire and a wire bond pad in a ball bonding process for an integrated circuit chip. There is also a need in the art for an integrated circuit chip that has a plurality of wire bond pads that are capable of providing increased bond strength to a ball bond of a small diameter wire.